Dispatch: Barack Obama is struggling to recreate the magic achieved in
states like North Carolina back in 2008. Peter Foster visits Greensboro to
see why this time round, people are not as excited.

The skinny black girl skips sylph-like up the stairs to the polling station, taking the white marble steps two-at-a-time in her eagerness to cast the first vote of her young life.

When 19-year-old Jasmine Edwards reaches the doors to the voting booths at North Carolina’s Agricultural and Technical (NCA&T) university — alma mater of civil rights activist and presidential candidate Jesse Jackson - she lets an involuntary “yay!”.

“I’m so excited to be voting for President Oba-a-ma,” she says, with the purest of smiles, “I was watching the debates and I felt like he was really talking to me — just to me on my own. He talked about school and financial aid and all that good stuff. I love the president.” With just 10 days to go until polling day, this is kind of wide-eyed eagerness that Mr Obama is trying to whip up with his eight states in 48 hours “marathon extravaganza” tour that hammers home the 'vote early’ message.

After telling crowds in Florida and Virginia on Thursday that he had “pulled an all-nighter” himself, Mr Obama was due to set his own example on Thursday night by flying back to Chicago and voting early — earlier than any president in history.

The latest polls of all likely voters continue to show Mr Romney with a slim lead, but both sides know that the White House will be won in key states like Florida, Virginia and particularly Ohio where early voting could provide a big boost for Mr Obama.

A Time poll of Ohio on Thursday showed Mr Obama leading by 5 percentage points in the state, by holding a two-to-one advantage among early voters; among those yet to vote, however, Mr Obama was tied 43-43 with Mr Romney.

Back in Greensboro, a once-booming textile town where 40 per cent of the population is black, Democrat activists are therefore doing everything to try to entice voters to the polls in order to secure a repeat of an extraordinary victory in North Carolina in 2008.

Then, Mr Obama won the state by just 14,000 votes, becoming the first Democrat to win North Carolina since Jimmy Carter in 1976, carried to victory on a wave of enthusiasm that saw an 8 per cent jump in turnout among young voters, women and minorities — both black and Hispanic.

This time, though, it doesn’t feel quite the same. “It’s good, but it still isn’t like '08,” says Augustine Joseph, a 22-year-old Democrat campaigner watching the steady trickle of early voters arrive. “Back then everyone wanted to vote, people wore their 'I voted, Have You?’ stickers for days afterwards.”

The latest polls show that keeping North Carolina will probably be a tall order for Mr Obama, but the campaign is not giving up, spending $1.2 million in advertising in the state last week and deluging voters with phone calls, emails and door-knocks.

“Need a ride to the polls?” reads a flier thrust into the hands of likely voters, giving them a phone number to call for transport on the day, while another hotline number is available for help ironing out voter registration complications.

Out on the doorsteps, however, it is clear that even among African-American voters the last four years of tepid jobs growth have taken their toll, with North Carolina’s 9.6 per cent jobless rate above the national average of 7.8 per cent.

African-American voters are ready to defend Mr Obama — blaming the global recession and obstructive Republicans in Congress for thwarting his plans — but it is also plain that the “audacity of hope” has quietly evaporated.

“I give Obama a bit more leeway than most, because it’s nonsense to think that everything can change overnight,” says Derek Vaughn, 42, a parcel sorter with UPS. “Has he met expectations? I’d say it was a draw. He doesn’t have all three points in the bag, but it’s better than nothing.”

This is not to mistake the African-American community’s fundamental loyalty to America’s first black president — 90 per cent will vote Democrat - but it does reflect the much tougher battle to motivate his supporters that Mr Obama faces second time around.

In Greensboro, where the student body of the NCA&T college is still 95 per cent black, the memories of southern segregation laws are kept very much alive, a constant reminder to students of the rights their parents and grandparents struggled for.

It was in Greensboro, in 1960, that four black students began a sit-in at the lunch counter of the local Woolworths store, demanding to be served in defiance of the “no blacks” policy, and triggering a wave of sit-ins against the repressive laws across the South.

For Jerry Shoffner, a 69-year-old voter out mowing lawns in the suburbs of the city, there is no need for monuments and memorials, the discrimination of that time is still fresh in his memory. Mr Obama can always count on his vote.

He recalled that his mother was working downstairs at the Woolworth’s when the sit-in began. “She knew I was a hot-head and that if someone spit on me there was going to be a confrontation,” he said, arguing that the president’s hands had been “tied” by Republicans.

“You know, when I first registered to vote in 1963, they made me read three paragraphs of the Constitution before letting me vote - a test they never applied to white people. To think then, that a black man could be elected president? Well, I never dreamed it would be true.”

Miss Edwards — 50 years Mr Shoffner’s junior and studying to be a social worker - walks past a statue erected to the memory of the “Greenbsoro Four”, but her motivation and memories are different.

“The President has done a good job and he’ll continue do a good job,” she says, “but that’s because of his character, not the colour of his skin. He is a president for all Americans, not just for African Americans - and that is what we want.”

Mr Obama, who has deliberately styled himself a “post-racial” president, would no doubt be proud of that sentiment, but as the race tightens to a dogfight, he must also hope it is a powerful enough motivating force to get him over the line in North Carolina — and elsewhere - on November 6.